S.F. museums' art sale enrages donor

Marcia and John Friede donated many artworks to the Fine Arts Museums. John Friede vows to try to get the museums' accreditation pulled in response to the plan to sell some of the pieces.

Marcia and John Friede donated many artworks to the Fine Arts Museums. John Friede vows to try to get the museums' accreditation pulled in response to the plan to sell some of the pieces.

Photo: Andrew Sullivan, Special To The Chronicle 2008

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A visitor to the de Young Nuseum is reflected off the case housing a Cult Object, made by Bahinemo People from the Hunstein Mountains dated 18th-19th century. John Friede - a de Young trustee, donated the Jolika Collection of New Guinean art to the de Young Museum. The collection is now embroiled in an ownership dispute because a week after he gave the collection to the museum, he signed a paper giving the collection to his siblings who want to sell it off. There may also be a dispute from Papua New Guinea who might lay claim that the pieces were improperly taken from the country.Photographed in San Francisco Friday Sept 19, 2008. less

A visitor to the de Young Nuseum is reflected off the case housing a Cult Object, made by Bahinemo People from the Hunstein Mountains dated 18th-19th century. John Friede - a de Young trustee, donated the ... more

Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle

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The M.H. de Young Memorial Museum's Jolika Collection includes this male figure made by the Biwat people, dated between 1280 and 1400.

The M.H. de Young Memorial Museum's Jolika Collection includes this male figure made by the Biwat people, dated between 1280 and 1400.

Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle

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Ornament for a Sacred Flute by the Lower Sepik Kambot People is dated in the 19th Century and early 20th Century. John Friede - a de Young trustee, donated the Jolika Collection of New Guinean art to the de Young Museum. The collection is now embroiled in an ownership dispute because a week after he gave the collection to the museum, he signed a paper giving the collection to his siblings who want to sell it off. There may also be a dispute from Papua New Guinea who might lay claim that the pieces were improperly taken from the country.Photographed in San Francisco Friday Sept 19, 2008. less

Ornament for a Sacred Flute by the Lower Sepik Kambot People is dated in the 19th Century and early 20th Century. John Friede - a de Young trustee, donated the Jolika Collection of New Guinean art to the de ... more

Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle

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A visitor to the de Young Museum is reflected off the case housing a Cult Object, made by Bahinemo People from the Hunstein Mountains dated 18th-19th century. John Friede - a de Young trustee, donated the Jolika Collection of New Guinean art to the de Young Museum. The collection is now embroiled in an ownership dispute because a week after he gave the collection to the museum, he signed a paper giving the collection to his siblings who want to sell it off. There may also be a dispute from Papua New Guinea who might lay claim that the pieces were improperly taken from the country.Photographed in San Francisco Friday Sept 19, 2008. less

A visitor to the de Young Museum is reflected off the case housing a Cult Object, made by Bahinemo People from the Hunstein Mountains dated 18th-19th century. John Friede - a de Young trustee, donated the ... more

Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle

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Vistors to the de Young Museum view masks in the Jolika Exhibit in San Francisco on Friday Sept 19, 2008.

Vistors to the de Young Museum view masks in the Jolika Exhibit in San Francisco on Friday Sept 19, 2008.

Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle

S.F. museums' art sale enrages donor

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The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco is selling pieces from its world-renowned collection of New Guinea art, and the man who donated the masterworks doesn't like it one bit.

"It's so totally wrong," John Friede said in a telephone interview from his home in Rye, N.Y. "It violates every rule and beyond."

Friede said he's sorry he ever decided to give the collection to the San Francisco museums, which include the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum and the Legion of Honor.

"Of course I regret it," he said. "I wish I had given it to a real institution, like the Chicago museum or the Dallas museum or the Seattle museum."

San Francisco museum officials declined to be interviewed about the controversy, instead releasing an unsigned statement saying that while they are grateful for Friede's donation, "the future disposition of artworks from the collection is consistent with the museum's high professional standards."

Proceeds from the sale will go to the museums' art acquisition fund.

Friede, a former member of the museums' Board of Trustees, initially donated more than 350 items from a collection of art from Papua New Guinea that he and his wife, Marcia, had assembled over decades. The Jolika Collection, named after the couple's three children, was the centerpiece of a new de Young Museum gallery named after the couple when the museum reopened in 2005.

Fifteen pieces of the collection are now slated to be sold June 19 at Christie's auction house in Paris, in what is described as "an exceptional sale of masterpieces of New Guinea from the Jolika Collection."

'Amazing opportunity'

A director for Christie's, the world's leading art auction house, described the sale as "an amazing opportunity for New Guinea works of such quality to come to market. For some - the rarest examples - we will not see works like this available again for another generation, if ever."

It's not unusual for museums to sell items from their collections, a process known in the art world as "deaccessioning." Often they are works that are not on display and are considered excess, that duplicate styles of art in the collection, or that are less significant examples of an artist's work.

Last year, for example, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art sold "Bridle Path," a work by American artist Edward Hopper, at auction for $10.3 million. The sale came just months after the museum acquired Hopper's "Intermission," a more highly regarded work.

Donation agreements

While the museum has a policy of not releasing the price of art it obtains, a similar Hopper piece, "Hotel Window," sold at auction for $26.8 million in 2006.

"Deaccession is a useful tool for museums, if done properly," said Dewey Blanton, a spokesman for the American Alliance of Museums, which accredits more than 1,000 museums across the country. Discussions about how a collection is handled, including what can and can't be sold, typically are worked out well before a donation is completed.

In the case of cosmetics tycoon Leonard Lauder's donation of $1 billion worth of Cubist art to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced last week, it "likely took months, if not years, to work out the details," Blanton said.

But even when details are spelled out, deaccession can be contentious. While San Francisco museum officials argue that the works in the Christie's auction were carefully chosen to provide money that will "enable the museum to preserve the core Jolika Collection works for continued public exhibition," Friede angrily disagrees.

"Of the $10 million in cash that my mother and I arranged to give to them, they still have $4 million," he said. "They also have an infinite number of second-rate things. ... It's just that the people who are there don't care at all about tribal art."

Rather than selling a variety of less significant pieces or a few major works from a specific subsection of the collection, the museum is picking "charming, lovely little things, all of which are irreplaceable," Friede said.

Previous issues

This isn't the first controversy to involve the Jolika Collection. After the Friedes pledged their 4,000-piece collection to the de Young in a series of agreements from 2003 to 2007, it was found that the family had used the artwork as collateral for both a $30 million promised payment to John Friede's two brothers in an inheritance dispute and for a $25 million loan. In 2010, 29 pieces, including at least one valued at more than $1 million, were removed from the collection so they could be sold to repay part of the debt.

"As a result of very difficult and complex legal circumstances over a period of more than five years, the city attorney's office and Fine Arts Museums staff have worked hard to preserve the collection for public enjoyment," museum officials said in their statement.

Friede did not say he would try to stop the Paris auction, but he vowed to work to pull the museum's accreditation.

"Even on my dying day I will take action to get the American Alliance of Museums to kick that museum out," he said.

That's not likely to happen. While a number of the complaints the alliance gets about museums involve deaccession of artwork, problems typically arise when a museum is selling art "to fix the boilers or pay the bills," said Blanton, spokesman for the alliance. "In my five years here, we've never withdrawn an accreditation."

Pledging to keep up fight

That won't stop Friede from fighting the group of which he was once an integral part.

Under Board of Trustees President Dede Wilsey, the de Young Museum "is a philistine encampment," with trustees who "have no interest in art," he said.

Nearly the entire board should be replaced, Friede added.

"The de Young and the Legion are important institutions to San Francisco," he said. "You can't have them run by schmucks."